OPINION: Just how much of social media is enough?

By Silvia Benini, Marta Giralt and Liam Murray, School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, University of Limerick, for RTÉ Brainstorm.

Social media use and abuse is a widely acknowledged international phenomenon. We appear to be eating, living and sleeping social media, whilse ignoring the potential risk to millions in human development caused by our obsession with cyberspace.

On a national level, Irish mental health experts have been giving an alarming warning to parents about a growing “pornified normative and the constant hum of social media anxiety” evident amongst teenage girls. On the third level front, we as lecturers and tutors have noticed and recorded various changes in our undergraduate students for at least the last five years. At a recent ERASMUS gathering involving Humanities colleagues from various European countries, it was noted anecdotally that student performance is decreasing, whilst attention deficits are rising.

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